[ upholstery and childhood nostalgia ]
Humberto Campana's botanic garden project blossoms as a sanctuary for preserving biodiversity and fostering environmental education
Humberto Campana
[ we have planted 20,000 trees since 2000 ]
«There is no space for nostalgia. My head is chaotic. Create create create – to not feel nostalgia. I refuse to feel nostalgia because otherwise I might fall into depression. I give myself a chance to dream because if I look at reality today I cannot live. I am not a designer by training I am a lawyer. I started by working with my hands making shell mosaics. I look for lightness. For me creating is a healing. A petal is the fruit of my madness. When I left law school in Memphis going into radical design some masters wanted to change the aesthetic. I don't think functionality, I think dream and these great masters brought less seriousness more fun more disco. I learned design through Sottsass Massimo Morozzi. The radicals are my icons. Design is sacred and spiritual while decoration is ephemeral. It has a short life. Decoration is a trend and I don't follow that direction».
«I have respect for it but I don't care. Fernando created the Campana Institute ten years ago in Milan. A social project dedicated to children and people in fragile situations. Next year we will inaugurate a botanical park in our city which Fernando and I inherited from our family. There will be a school of carpentry local traditions and weaving. We are working with a group of biologists to recreate the original nature. Fernando dreams that I am pursuing. It isn't easy to be here in Milan without him».
(introductive words collected by Carlo Mazzoni in Milan, April 2023)
«Sometimes I am walking on the street and I get into a volcano of ideas. I make notes, ensuring that no idea escapes my grasp».
São Paulo based designer Humberto Campana starts recounting. With four decades of studio work behind him, the designer contemplates the idea of establishing a museum in Brazil with the studio’s archives showcasing their design process.
Since the year 2000, the studio has disseminated speculative works into the design world. Some of their most collected pieces are plush toy chairs: the Campana brothers generated a new approach to upholstery. Campana remembers «it was luck, me and my brother had an encounter with a street vendor selling an assortment of plush teddy bears and alligators on the street of São Paulo. We saw the opportunity to create a chair using these toys as upholstery while infusing childhood nostalgia within it».
The resulting chair became «a reminder of these emotions of carefree joy and lightness». These series of chairs became tools to speculate on our shared futurities. In 2008 the studio presented at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, the TransPlastic series as a fictional tale set in a plastic-centric world. This collection showcased a «transgenic creations where nature triumphs over synthetic materials» Campana explains. «Design is part of our response to the times we are passing by, allowing us to send a political message by saying: take a look at this too».
These messages translate the designer’s urge to convey a personal narrative rooted in his geography «even if we create bridges between one country and Brazil, it is still for us to tell a Brazilian story, an organic, emotional and playful story of textures». Born in the Brazilian countryside in the 1950s, the designer reflects on a childhood blessed with the absence of paved roads leading to São Paulo. He recalls merging with the farm's landscape and witnessing movie experiences at a theater.
«Let us cultivate our garden», replied
Candide to Pangloss in the concluding line of Voltaire's tale Candide, ou l'Optimisme (1759). This statement encapsulates the notion of actively engaging in society, refining one's reasoning and introspection. It emphasizes the cultivation of modesty and simplicity while recognizing a form of collective togetherness. Originally derived from the Latin term ‘cultus’, which denoted ‘to cultivate the earth’, in the Twelfth century. The word 'cultivate' has since then evolved to also signify the nurturing and development of one's faculties through education and exercise. In a similar vein, Humberto Campana tends to shape both a physical and immaterial own garden – a domain of materiality, heritage, transmission, and wit.
Campana recalls transforming the family backyard house into imaginative playgrounds, constructing pavilions and reliving scenes from the films they had seen in the theater. The designer reminisces «we were making toys with plants and creating our own swimming pools using rocks and water in the creek behind our house». The heritage from his childhood continues to inspire his work today, infusing it with a daily wonder for the environment around him.
Recognizing the diversity of Brazil, he highlighted the exploration and seeking inspiration from different regions with a strong focus on embracing the vernacular and working with natural materials. Campana emphasized his fascination with «weaving, working with leather, clay, carving rocks. These are all materials that are part of what Brazil is shaped by and is reflected in the essence of the country's rich cultural heritage».
Humberto Campana's process consists in conversations with his late brother Fernando. He aims to extend this collaboration – even more so today, a year after his brother’s passing – through one of the studio’s ongoing projects which is the creation of a botanic garden – a sanctuary aimed at preserving nature and fostering environmental education. This project «keeps his heritage and ideas alive, Fernando has developed a lot of drawings and ideas for this project and it is my mission to continue what he started».
On a family land they inherited, the two brothers have planted twenty-thousand trees since the year 2000. They have recently been considering transforming the land into a park or establishing a foundation there. Campana expands, «we started by working with nature. Nature created the architecture. We are constructing pavilions with plants. Our current focus involves constructing pavilions using plant materials, such as cacti and bamboo, with the intention of integrating nature into the architectural design. Through this evolving process, we aim to create architectures that encapsulate our visions».
The designer has collaborated with a biologist to reconstruct the original landscape and expand the logic of this project to other regions of Brazil. Campana also recently unveiled a mural in the park which is inspired by his brother's collages. He adds «The concept is also centered around healing. Visitors enter and depart the park in silence, allowing them to connect with the sand, water, and the harmonious symphony of the natural world – experiences often unfamiliar to city dwellers». The designer’s work expands further outside of the studio with an institute that the brothers launched in 2009 as a way to «use design as a tool for transformation through social and educational programs».
The institute collaborates with local NGOs and communities to address social and environmental challenges. He emphasizes
«the collaborative nature of the institute is a form of circular economy. Embrace the use of simple materials and traditional techniques, such as weaving, leatherworking, rock carving, and clay molding». Campana's exploration of vernacular and natural fibers reflects his fascination with Brazil's diversity. The studio is currently conducting research on Earth, which will inform a collection for an upcoming exhibition in New York, next year.
Collaborating with artisans allows the studio to develop techniques and material explorations – like for a project in Rome for the gallery Giustini / Stagetti centered around an artisan specializing in bronze ornament repairs, and another in Brazil with a leatherworker.
The designer is also working with individuals in a drug recovery community in the countryside of San Paulo. Together, they have built houses using bricks. The designer is proud to continue this ongoing project, drying the bricks obtained from the community’s shared labor and selling them in specific spaces in the city. The project serves «as a message of resilience and progress, an endeavor that holds personal pride», he adds.
«Exchange and collaboration is a way to enlarge my vocabulary. I am currently collaborating on a project where we will take a chair and deconstruct it, transforming it into a new and distinct element». Campana acknowledges the externalizing of his ideas to assess their viability and connection to his personal narrative «I stay on track, avoiding tangents, to remain true to my own story and that of Fernando's. I am demanding with myself and want to keep going and inspire», one might add ‘and to cultivate our garden’.